Q: Can you talk a little bit about how you first became involved in the performing arts just the very beginning?

I grew up, dancing. I always knew I wanted to dance professionally. I grew up dancing in Connecticut, and went to Marymount Manhattan college for it. I had a BFA in dance and a BA in Psychology. And I always wanted to do both. And then after graduation. I had kind of a path that led me somewhere else for a while, which I'm sure we'll get into. And then when I finally came back to New York I auditioned for and booked Fiddler on the Roof.

Q:  What has dance and musical theater or performing arts taught you that you apply to your everyday life and how you engage with the world?

I kind of see them slightly separately so dance was something that I had only done. I’d only danced until I was 22-ish and then musical theater came into my life. So dance had always been my first love, and it was something that was so innate in me that I never questioned it.  I never doubted it. Every single time I was on stage I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be, and that continued into college and continued into my time with Fiddler. And so that's one element: just the self understanding of being in the place you're meant to be - feeling so certain about the current walk of life. On top of that, there are so many other important things socially. Some of the best people in my entire life are the people I met through performing including the dance teacher I grew up with. My best friends are from my dance growing up and from my time in college. Dancing helps you get engaged with your body. And when you're dancing, you can finally get in touch with the physical world through your physical reality. And a lot of the pain, you realize was just brought on by your mind and it was unnecessary. Which is why I actually got interested in psychology because I was injured in high school, and I was so depressed and I didn't understand why and that's when I started being like, Ah, that's interesting. Let me go further and since then it's completely evolved, but that was the initiating factor. And then when I got to do Fiddler - it's one of my favorite stories of all time. It's one of my favorite shows of all time. And it's such an important message and such memorable music in such emotional circumstances. And we got to give that to a different audience every single night. You could feel how important it was for everybody involved whether they were watching or whether they were participating in it.

Q: What have been some challenges in your pre professional or professional career and how did you either overcome them or learn something new about yourself through that?

I had a lot of issues. I had a lot of injuries, growing up and throughout college. And what I can now look back and see is that it was most likely almost definitely related to all the stress and pressure I had been putting on myself and that teachers had been putting on me. I also developed fairly significant eating issues and added my sense of worth when I was in college and I really lost myself. And so, back then I was understanding and feeling all of the issues I had. But it wasn't until I left college and actually left dance all together, that I started to put everything together. And now I'm able to really do the work to heal and come back to why I started this in the first place. And I’m working on a couple of projects to help people with the prevention of what happened to me, as well as the healing of what happened, what can happen in this situation. And there is a lot of pressure to look a certain way, which presents a bunch of issues especially when you're in a leotard and tights every day in front of a mirror every day and you have people telling you that even in your tiny little frame, you still aren't skinny enough. How can that still be possible?  That's my biggest issue that I'm working on now to help change with some pretty incredible people. These were my biggest issues. By the end of college I was injured. I had started developing an autoimmune disease which I'm still struggling with now. I have no doubt that the stress and pain, emotional and physical, that I had put on myself and that had been put on me contributed directly to that. So after college, I could barely get through petite allegro. I barely made it through graduation. I had worked on this whole mental health intervention for the dance department, and it just, I didn't have the energy anymore. I couldn't do it. I had to basically run away from my school. I actually also experienced a sexual assault with one of the adjunct professors from my school and at that point I hadn't told anybody. Everything was overwhelming and I was in pain so it just seemed like dancing was a possibility for me. But I knew I didn't want to go directly into school for Psychology so I spent the year after college just teaching dance a ton. But I was burnt out and I wasn't giving them my best self because I love these kids so much. I was reverse commuting to Connecticut from New York. And I was miserable. I just knew it still wasn't everything that they deserved. So at the end of that year. I said, I'm done with this. I had saved up all my money. And I decided to move from New York. And I ended up taking a little trip to visit my cousins in Israel. So I actually ended up in Israel for three months, where I discovered my love for writing.

...I really dove into my writing and I fell in love with it and I went to visit some friends in London because I had studied abroad there and I took my first acting class and totally fell in love with it and I thought, Okay, well, I guess, dance isn't for me anymore. I was thinking it was too hard,  I don't even like it. I hate dance. And I'm going to be - I'm going to be acting. I came back to New York, just for some visits, and my friends had booked Broadway shows and I was going to see them and visiting friends from college and I kind of just fell back into it. I  ended up getting a random apartment off some random Facebook page with a bunch of musical theater people, a composer and another actor. They started forcing me to sing all the time. And then I started taking acting classes and then they gave me an opportunity to be in a workshop and a reading and it kind of all unraveled from there. And I had auditioned for Fiddler in April and then I auditioned again in August and I was so defeated after that. I thought, if I'm not going to be in Fiddler,  I don't even know what show I could possibly be in because Fiddler is my movement - it's what I want more than anything in the world and and you know maybe this is really a sign. Maybe I really am meant to be acting and doing other things so I ended up not really dancing anymore and just doing a lot of yoga and trying to get back to my health and get back to myself. I started taking care of my body and started working on understanding what's really wrong. So I originally auditioned April 2018, and August 2018. I went back to audition in May 2019. And I ended up booking it! Every time I went in for Fiddler it was the most fun, the most laid back. I was so confident, even when I didn't book it at the beginning. I was just like, this is going to happen because this is my dream show, and there's no chance I don't do this show. And so even when I was defeated I still have this underlying sense of hope that, and understanding that it will probably happen, and then it eventually happened. Throughout my time learning this choreography and getting to dance in a way that was so organic so natural that I hadn't danced like that for years. I had been doing yoga so I was taking care of my body and I felt good and I felt healthier.  And I also was writing every day and still taking acting classes. So I felt like a dancer 1,000% and I don't think I would have gotten there had I not walked away, especially because I don't know what would have happened had I not discovered writing which is what keeps me mentally sane and my yoga which keeps me physically relaxed because I struggle with that a lot. And so I walked away from dance and found those things which then led me back to it in a healthy way which is kind of my big objective is to help people be holistically well as performers.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected you as a performing artist?

So, the most obvious way is that I was there and we left on March 13th. And it was not pretty, it was extremely devastating, the way that it ended. We had been a really strong unit since we started in July. We very quickly became a family. And we, as the pandemic started as the virus started spreading and people were getting  concerned, you know we had some protocol like we weren't allowed to sign Playbills anymore. And we were advised to not go to clubs, things like that. But we really weren't expecting, of course no one was, but we were not expecting it to be over. So, the interesting part of theater or any kind of performing art is that someone said this so perfectly in my cast - actually that you're signing up for something where there is a beginning and an end. Most of the time, where you can see the end. And so you know that you can power through. Even in the hard moments, all year I was completely grateful. It wasn't perfect but nothing ever is. There were some times that I missed home or some issues that came up. But I could easily come back to the fact that I was meant to be here. I worked so hard to get here, and this is actually way better than I could have ever imagined. It far surpassed any expectation I had fo my first real significant professional job, I suppose. And it just blew it out of the park and the people did and the story did and being on a stage is actually my first musical or play ever. I had never done anything, not even in high school and I was understudying, you know, singing roles and the acting roles and it was just a whirlwind.  I was a swing and the dance captain so I had a lot on my plate and I was just loving, all of it and even the parts that I didn't love. I found them as opportunities to move my job forward move the show forward help people around me.  I still saw it as an opportunity to grow and to give. So you're doing all this work throughout the year. And then you know that you're going to have your time of grieving and celebration at the end. And it's like everything that you've worked all year for. It's all going to be brought together in a beautifully emotional devastating joyous way. When we had our last show, half of the people were crying because they kind of figured what was happening and half of the people were in total denial so there was a lot of mixed emotions and interactions and I, I am so grateful in such a weird way that I had the reaction I had, which was the day before. I was standing backstage for the opening number “Tradition'' because I sing backstage for that number, and I couldn't compose myself. I was just crying.  I pulled it together enough to sing. But I didn't pull it together enough so that it didn't look like I was crying and normally as dance captains we stand in the wing and kind of watch everybody and that means that if someone looks off, they can see us, and I didn't want them to see how upset I was especially because things weren't really cemented yet about what it was. But I said to myself, ‘Oh, this might be one of your last times in the show backstage with this cast with these people.And I forced myself into the wing and I kind of put my head to the side as to not completely show that I was a mess. And as soon as my friends came off my best friend came up to me and he was like, “Jess, come on,” but then our last show was so devastating we had just found out that Broadway was closed, and we knew that it was just a matter of time, but we thought it was only going to be for a few weeks or maybe a month if that. And I cried for the entire show and I could not compose myself in the boughs, and I was just a puddle. Iit was strangely cathartic, even though I didn't know for sure we weren't coming back, just the slight chance that we weren't coming back. It  was a total demonstration of how much this show meant to me in a physical sense; it was my emoting, the pure love that I have for this show and these people. And then we all came home and slowly we found out more things. Eventually we found out that it wasn't coming back for this year but is planning to come back in the fall. And so you have how we felt then you have, how horrible we felt for the audience who didn't get to see it -  for the families who were supposed to see it.  And then the devastation of almost all of our peers, I mean all of our peers at that moment, getting laid off but some of the tours that had been totally canceled the understanding that a lot of the Broadway shows would never even open, and a lot of shows would never come back. And so you're mourning your own loss and you're mourning for all of your peers, all of these people that you love. And on top of that you're mourning for the whole world being in the middle of the one of the most devastating times of our life. And so you have all of this initial reaction and then you have the thought of  how the hell am I supposed to pay for anything. I actually don't have an apartment in New York right now because when I booked the tour, there was no point. And I was to move back as soon as the tour was done. But with this I came I was very lucky that I was able to come back to my parents' home. But, you know,  the joy and pain of being in the performing arts, is that you're doing what you're meant to do. You're doing what lights you up. You're doing what feels generous and giving to others, you are connecting with yourself as deeply as possible and with the people around you and the world around you and with nature, and everything that exists on this planet and beyond. But if you're an artist you know there's nothing else that you could be doing.  And artists always find a way to work. And people immediately started teaching and giving all these various offerings of different classes and different opportunities and artists find a way to hold people up to support them and embrace them. And we saw within that first week that having to do things virtually did not mean that artists would give up that part of themselves that are so generous and creative in embracing humanity and moving forward. And now, everyone's in a very tricky position of not knowing what things are going to look like and who's going to have a job at the end of all this. And as artists. We're used to that. Or at least I think that many artists are because you don't know. You have a contract but you don't really know how certain anything is. Shows close early, people get hurt. Things happen, and being an artist means that you've signed on to that life. So, this pandemic is devastating. And most people I talked to have a lot of ups and a lot of downs. A lot of people are sick and hurt and dying, all around us. And it's like all of the negativity of the world feels very heightened right now, and all the news is very horrific. And we can choose to only look at that, or we can choose to put that aside, focus on what's the deepest part of yourself, the love, the joy, the hope all of that, and live from there and work from there and create from there. I'm not saying I think like everything happens for a reason. It's more that artists find a way to make everything work, we find a way to grow from something, heal from something else, explore this and get really angry about something else and really feel everything or not.